


This Is Not The Way (To Get Laid)

by Sophonisba



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Gossip, Humor, Pre-Het, Season/Series 02, Team, implied past het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-13
Updated: 2010-07-13
Packaged: 2017-10-10 13:05:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophonisba/pseuds/Sophonisba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It began as just another team picnic... sound has a habit of carrying, by the ocean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is Not The Way (To Get Laid)

       The picnic on the balcony was going rather well, John Sheppard thought. Whatever had happened to Ronon when they took him hunting with the Athosians, it had left him calmer. Less tense (although still with a sense of leashed danger). He was, if not relaxed, at rest.

       Rodney, too, after the requisite amount of complaints about sitting on the ground (even on top of one of Teyla's rugs), the brightness of the sun, and the important work he could be doing if he'd eaten in the cafeteria and been done with it, seemed to be enjoying himself. He had gone down to Stores before the picnic and borrowed a broad-brimmed straw hat, which kept blowing off and plastering itself against the balcony doors before Sheppard or Ronon could reach out a long arm and retrieve it, each time to more and more laughter (although Teyla looked faintly melancholy when it did, for some reason).

       Teyla herself was... Teyla. Not precisely a rock; more like a sun, something you assumed would be there in the sky and under you at night each day to warm the world, even when it beat down heavily or was far away and invisible. John still wasn't quite sure what about their leaving her to mind the store while they reported back to Earth had done the trick, but something in her that must have been unnoticeably draining away since well before the Siege was back, and showed no signs of going away.

       It still felt peculiarly unsettled not to have Ford there, to laugh and lay first claim to the drumsticks and, while helping retrieve the hatspawn for the thirty-fifth time, ingenuously point out that **Dr. McKay** was usually the one accusing the **Marines** of spending their time on exercises in futility. Perhaps that was what was weighing on Teyla.

       "And then," an unfamiliar woman's voice drifted over to them, "while he was undoing my buttons, he started telling me about this time some woman **who later married his father** picked him up at a bar and gave him a blowjob!"

       Everyone hastily looked around with more or less interest or concern.

       Their balcony was on one of the points of the fractal-shaped floor of the tower; across the indent and a floor or so down, two women had paused on another balcony. Sheppard recognized one of them as Lieutenant Cadman, one of the new contingent of Marines that the _Daedalus_ had brought them; the speaker, with darker red hair and her face turned away from them, had to be one of the civilians who'd come in with them. (Sheppard was still having a little trouble getting used to not instantly recognizing everyone in the city anymore; even back in the early days, he'd at least known everyone's surnames and specialties.)

       "Seriously," the scientist went on, spreading her hands (Dr... Brown, was it? Something in biology?), "what in the world made him think that was appropriate to bring up then? Why would I want to hear it?"

       "Katie," Lieutenant Cadman sighed, "you have to understand that men -- they don't think like us. He probably meant to hint that he'd like it if you gave **him** a blowjob."

       'Katie' spluttered.

       On their own balcony, Rodney looked around in irritated puzzlement. "Why **wouldn't** that suggest that he'd like a blowjob?" he murmured (actually remembering to keep his voice above a piercing whisper). "How much more clearly would he have to hint? 'I like blowjobs?' 'If you felt like leaning over and blowing me, I wouldn't object?'"

       "But why he'd think that THAT would make me want to give him one -- " Katie was saying at the same time.

       "Men," Cadman proclaimed, "have no idea of what's sexy."

       John exchanged a puzzled glance with the other two men on the balcony (Teyla wasn't meeting their eyes, for some reason). He had a perfectly good and reasonably well-functioning sex drive. He found many things sexy. Sometimes inconveniently so: men could get all touchy about what was after all a mere reaction to the elegance of supreme craftsmanship, to being in the presence of something -- anything -- done really well, and women tended to Assume Things and not let him know until long afterward.

       "This guy came up to me at a party once," the lieutenant said, starting back towards the door inside, "and started bragging 'I have a friend in the DMV who got me a fake handicapped permit, so I can park **anywhere I want**..."

       The door closed behind them, cutting off Katie's outraged laughter.

       The Atlantis Recon One team looked back and forth at each other for a moment.

       "**What** was that she was saying at the end?" Ronon asked eventually.

       "Basically, that some guy tried to pick her up by saying 'Hi, I cheat and exploit wounded people.' Now, I'm sure there **are** some assholes out there that really do get all hot and bothered over the idea of treading the maimed into the muck -- "

       "But I for one don't want them near my sensitive bits with a ten-foot-pole," John interrupted Rodney's rant. "Probably use it to whack them with or something."

       "And anyway," Rodney half-shrugged, presumably agreeing with the point, "I still want to know what was wrong with telling her about the blowjob. That is, uh, why didn't she get it? What could that **possibly** mean other than 'I like blowjobs?'"

       "'I am a -- ' _djyerk_, I think you say?" Teyla said after a moment, at the same time as Ronon began "Uh... sometimes you do things backward here, but... "

       "No, go on," Teyla said as his voice trailed off.

       "With the stepmother, it's..." Ronon waved his hand in a sort of sideways wriggling motion. "It would be, if she'd been his stepmother at the time. So maybe it's titillating, but you could also take it as 'I didn't keep from telling you about her even with, what with my dad and all, I had more reasons than manners not to. So I won't keep from telling the next one all about you, no matter what.'"

       "And also," Sheppard put in, watching Rodney blink, "it's depressing how long it took me to get that, unless they specifically ask you to fantasize, women generally don't want you to talk about other women in the middle of sex. They take it as not paying attention to the one you've got or something."

       Everyone's gaze slowly drifted to Teyla.

       "There are times, for everyone, when all you wish is a warm body against the darkness in your mind," she said slowly, "and if so, all you need is for that body to do likewise. But people are not animals, and so you meet someone and learn to know them and then ask whether they wish to affirm life with you; and if that someone agrees, or especially if they invited you, you expect that they wish to do so with **you**, for your sake. If they must and will speak of another, why should they not have asked that person, rather than you yourself? It is an intrusion, and ruins any mood of warm companionship that may have grown." She half-shrugged, holding her fingers well away from Rodney as she peeled a tangelo. "Doctor Weir has said, once, that even women looking for 'Mr. Right Now' expect that he shall be looking for 'Ms. Right Now,' and not 'Mrs. Back Then.'"

       "I didn't know you talked about that kind of stuff with Elizabeth." Rodney gave his teammate a startled, wary look.

       "I do not believe it ever occurred to you to ask."

       "Women talk about those things," Ronon grunted. "Sensible men don't want to know."

       "Anyway," Rodney changed the subject, "talking about sex you had with someone else in the past really turns women off?"

       Teyla swallowed her tangelo segment. "Often."

       "Unless you're fantasizing together," John corrected, "but that's different."

       "Huh. So **that's** what she meant."

       "She?" Teyla wondered.

       "A woman I was seeing for a couple months back on Earth, until she got huffy about things and it all fell apart. You don't know her."

       His teammates looked at each other.

       "Considering your arthritic-porcupine approach to picking up girls," Sheppard said dryly, "I'm surprised you got to a month, let alone more."

       "Hey! We can't all bat our eyelids and have all the alien priestesses come running -- and at least **I** don't roll over and blindly trust suspicious aliens that anyone but a blind man could see were lying their heads off -- "

       John coughed something that sounded rather like "Quindecim." Across from him, Teyla had gone very, very still.

       "Yes, well, that was completely different," Rodney grumbled. "And anyway, once the incomprehensible preliminary bother's out of the way, I'm a sex god."

       "A sex god." Sheppard stared at him. Rodney didn't particularly look any different. The smear of his homemade sunblock was still trailing back to one ear. His blue shirt managed, somehow, to be rumpled. The hat had blown off again, and his squarish face had the same not-quite-petulant look of genius confronted once again with the petty pace of thought of mortal man that tended to be his default expression, marred slightly by the fact that he was currently chewing a bite that had nearly halved his second hamburger, sucking in a dangling bit of onion from where it had straggled down his chin. And yet, he could have sworn that Rodney McKay had just proclaimed himself a sex god.

       "Uh-huh." Rodney swallowed his mouthful and waved the rest of the hamburger in the air for emphasis. "I don't know what she was complaining about, but it certainly wasn't the sex."

       "...righhht."

       "No, see, it's not like it's something I'm desperate for, so I can afford to take my time if necessary and do it right. So often people settle for good enough when they could manage great, or pay attention to the part that they're interested in and assume the rest will take care of itself somehow, or get so caught up in trying to manage perfect that they suck all the fun out of it, and it's not like there's much point in it unless all parties are enjoying themselves, that's one of the many things hands are for... "

       "I believe you," John said hastily. Ronon had been nodding thoughtfully at every point Rodney made, and he really couldn't deal with both of them at once. Really.

       "So many women call on you," Ronon said, thoughtfully.

       "Well, not really." Rodney shrugged. "Word has to get around for that kind of thing, and for all rumor gets twice round the city and grown into something entirely out of proportion whenever you don't want it to it doesn't seem to have been passed around in this case. And as it hasn't, it's not exactly something you can, oh, drop into most of the conversations we have around here. 'The Wraith have taken the bait, the Z.P.M. is still about 54% charged, I'm a sex god, and the shields are holding.' See? Not currently necessary information, and it might well distract some of the people whose concentration we're all trusting our lives to, and it's not as if I'm going to go spam a listserv or something."

       "Perhaps you would prefer me to make your carnal prowess known among our people, then?" Teyla said, her lips curving ever so slightly.

       "Oh, hey, would you? I'd really appreciate it."

       Teyla picked up her headset from where it lay beside her, set it askew on her head, tapped the activator, and said, "Please be advised, dwellers in the City, that Doctor Rodney McKay is a 'sex god.'"

       John had -- he had suspected as much when she began, but he hadn't actually --

       He remained frozen, one hand still outstretched towards Teyla, while Rodney choked on his hamburger beside him and someone on the radio -- Sheppard thought Corporal Talldeer -- said _"What?"_

       _"Really?"_ Lieutenant Cadman purred, before the muffled sounds of what Sheppard knew Marines too well not to recognize as a subdued scuffle overtook her own radio pickup. Was she going to --?

       Well, at any rate, she couldn't possibly be worse than Annabel Waters, if that were even the meteorologist's real name; at least 'known and turned Trust counteragent' had served to deflect Rodney before John had had to reveal details of just how crazy and controlling Dr. Waters had proved to be as a casual bedmate, even if more than half of that could be ascribed to the high latitudes and resulting borked diurnal rhythms of Mac-Town.

       _"Congratulations, ma'am!"_ Sergeant Alvarez interrupted his unprofitable reflections, while Teyla helpfully pounded Rodney on the back.

       _"Way to go, Doc!"_ Stackhouse said on her heels.

       _"Teyla, **why** the open channel?"_ It was probably very petty of him to find some minor satisfaction in the bemusement coloring even Kate Heightmeyer's patient voice.

       _"I thought they were all having a picnic lunch,"_ Carson said plaintively, and a beat later _"Wait, is this on?"_ as another five people intensely chorused _"**Really?!**"_

       "You do this a lot?" Ronon wondered as Rodney hastily washed down the last of his cough.

       "Not that this isn't admirably direct," the latter managed as Sheppard tried to think of how to answer the former, "and it's hardly blowing my own horn when you're doing it, but I thought you offered to inform **your** people?"

       "Are not these, too, my people now?" Teyla's smile was as sweet as her voice, but John knew her too well now not to recognize the imp dancing in her eyes.

       _"**Rodney**."_ Elizabeth sounded as if she and a headache were working on a third aspirin tablet.

       "Hey!" Rodney's indignant wave of the last quarter of hamburger as he snatched up his own headset was lost on Elizabeth, but a half-ring of onion went flying until Ronon snagged it out of midair and a dollop of relish landed below Teyla's collarbone and slid inexorably down into the warm valley of her breast. "It's not as if I knew she was going to use the radio to announce it beforehand!"

       "He really didn't," Ronon said helpfully.

       _"The radio,"_ Elizabeth said meaningfully over him.

       "What is this, Everybody Pick On McKay Day?"

       "I thought that was Highday," Sheppard commented, his ability to snark fortunately independent of the large part of his brain that was still hung up on the concept of Rodney McKay, Sex God.

       _"Rodney... "_ Elizabeth sighed, "we'll talk about this later. Good **day**."

       "I did not realize," Teyla said, "that Doctor Weir would have some quarrel with... "

       "Well, it's just your choice of, of method she's arguing with," Rodney explained. "I guess spamming the radio really is as bad as a newsgroup, even if it is inherently ephemeral."

       "So... not the subject?" Ronon wondered.

       "Well, it's a fact," Rodney shrugged. "You can't argue with facts." He popped the neglected corner of his burger into his mouth.

       "You can argue whether they **are** facts," Sheppard pointed out, "in the absence of independent verification... "

       "It's not like she doesn't know," Rodney said absently, swallowing.

       John and Teyla stared at each other for a moment -- her gaze full of amused speculation, his of he didn't even know what -- while Ronon nodded thoughtfully and with a peculiar sort of satisfaction, until sense caught up with Sheppard and he demanded "That last bit wasn't on air, was it?"

       "No," Rodney said automatically, and then misgiving slid over his face for a moment before his eyes lighted on his headset, on the picnic cloth next to his bowl of egg salad. "No, of course not. See?"

       "Should it have been?" Ronon wondered.

       "NO," his teammates chorused.

       The silence thereafter was only enlivened by the sounds of Rodney chewing and Teyla's fork in her egg salad bowl until Katie (Brown?)'s voice drifted up from the opposite balcony's door once more.

       "Really, Laura, it isn't as if it **changes** my opinion... "

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry to say that both of the pick-up lines quoted by Katie and Cadman in the beginning are taken from real life.


End file.
